Trump picks former drug firm executive for HHS secretary
WASHINGTON — In a tweet from Manila, President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he will nominate Alex Azar, a former pharmaceutical executive and health care official during the Bush administration, to be his new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
If confirmed by the Senate, Azar would replace Tom Price, who resigned under pressure Sept. 29 after a series of reports in Politico documented his repeated use of private jets and government aircraft instead of commercial planes, at a cost of more than $400,000.
Investigations into Price’s actions are ongoing.
Price, a Republican who represented a Georgia district in Congress before he was named to the Cabinet, also presided over the failure of the president’s effort to make good on a campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.
The nomination of Azar represents a shift for Trump, who in his Cabinet picks to date often has not selected candidates with experience in the department they would oversee.
Azar served as deputy secretary of HHS from 2005 to 2007, in the second term of President George W. Bush.
He later served at the drug firm Eli Lilly as director of managed care and, from 2012 to early this year, as president.
In announcing the appointment, Trump suggested Azar’s tenure at the drug company would give him insight into how to trim prescription costs, historically a major health care complaint.
“Happy to announce, I am nominating Alex Azar to be the next HHS Secretary,” Trump said. “He will be a star for better healthcare and lower drug prices!”
Democrats on the committees that will oversee Azar’s nomination expressed some skepticism, in part because of his years at Lilly.
The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee that will vet the nominee, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, said he will ask for Azar’s “commitment to faithfully implement the Affordable Care Act and take decisive, meaningful action to curtail the runaway train of prescription drug costs.”
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top-ranking Democrat on the health committee, used the nomination of Azar to blast the man he would replace.
She said Price “sabotaged families’ coverage, tried time after time to jam Trumpcare through Congress, eroded women’s access to reproductive care, and more.”
Republicans lauded the nomination.
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Republican who heads the Senate’s health committee, said Azar has “the qualifications and experience to get results” and said the committee would “promptly” set a date for hearings.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, RUtah, the Finance Committee chairman, used the announcement to criticize the Affordable Care Act and said he looks forward to hearing Azar’s “plan to restore our faith in our nation’s health care system and get it back on track.”
Andy Slavitt, who oversaw Medicare, Medicaid and insurance markets during the Obama administration, said that while he differed with any Trump pick over “political values … realistically, it could have been a helluva lot worse.”
“He’s somebody who has been a career civil servant; he has a lot of respect for the people in the department and that’s a good start,” Slavitt said.
But he said Azar’s impact will rest more on whether he will encourage bipartisan solutions.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said Price came into the department “with very, very strong ideological views” and declined to meet with his group.
Benjamin said Azar has not been among those openly fighting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
He also said he was not bothered by Azar’s affiliation with Lilly.
“He knows the inside of the way the industry works; maybe he comes up with clever solutions.”